Bringing a virtual brain to life

March 20, 2013

Neocortex (credit: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

In 2009, Dr. Henry Markram conceived of the Human Brain Project, a sprawling and controversial initiative of more than 150 institutions around the world that he hopes will bring scientists together to realize his dream, as The New York Times notes.

In January, the European Union raised the stakes by awarding the project a 10-year grant of up to $1.3 billion — an unheard-of sum in neuroscience.

An equally ambitious “big brain” idea is in the works in the United States: The Obama administration is expected to propose its own project, with up to $3 billion allocated over a decade to develop technologies to track the electrical activity of every neuron in the brain.

But just as many obstacles stand in the way of the American project, a number of scientists have expressed serious reservations about Markram’s project.

Some say we don’t know enough about the brain to simulate it on a supercomputer. And even if we did, these critics ask, what would be the value of building such a complicated “virtual brain”? Some researchers say it is premature to invest money in a simulation while important principles of brain function remain to be discovered.

Haim Sompolinsky, a neuroscientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: “The rhetoric is that in a decade they will be able to reverse-engineer the human brain in computers. This is fantasy. Nothing will come close to it in a decade.”

Some say the controversy surrounding Dr. Markram’s work distracts from the real issue: How should neuroscience harness its resources to achieve true understanding of the brain?

“Some 10,000 laboratories worldwide are pursuing distinct questions about the brain,” Dr. Koch of the Allen Institute wrote in the journal Nature. “Neuroscience is a splintered field.”

Dr. Markram agreed. The Human Brain Project, he said, will provide a “unifying principle” for scientists to rally around.

For the first time, data from laboratories around the world will be in one place, he said, adding that trying to build a simulation will drive advances in fields like computing and robotics. An entire division of the project is devoted to creating a new breed of intelligent robots with “neuromorphic” microchips designed like neurons in the human brain.

Comments (51)

Apologies if others have pointed this out, but i just don’t understand the criticism pointed at the Blue Brain project as is obvious in this piece. In the absence of a thorough understand of the brain, or even a general accepted theory of it’s operation at multiple levels, it seems to me that all brain research being done is of value in expanding our knowledge. The basic biological research is fundamental to providing the basic facts to projects like Blue Brain, and Blue Brain (and others like Spaun) provides a platform for experimenting with theories, which provides the next generation of questions for neuroscientists to answer. I understand there is limited money to go around, but denegrating other projects to maximize your own take is not good collaborative science.

Henry Markram’s Human Brain Project, based at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, deserves the generous grant from the European Union. This project is expected to make a great contribution in the research on neuroscience. In his attempt to simulate the human brain, Markram and his team have laid a solid ground for their embarking on the present topic. Despite its preparatory construct, Blue Brain embodies numerous innovations, which themselves are worthy years of rigorous investigation. The sheer aspiration of a virtualized human brain on a supercomputer is stimulating and exhilarating, not to mention its potential application in computer-based drug trials.

At its current stage, Markram’s Blue Brain, has inevitably been greeted with skepticism, given the complexity of neuron structure of the human brain. Equally acknowledgeable is the fact that enormous areas of brain functions remain unknown. Critics have good reasons to doubt about definite criteria for evaluating the Human Brain Project. Nevertheless, there were copious instances of successful stories in academic research when momentous discoveries emerged unexpectedly during the exploratory process. Too much theoretical consideration may sometimes inhibit innovative findings.

Scrupulously conceived — and armed with over 20000 prior experiments — by a brilliant scientist with abundant previous experiences in well-known research institutes, the Human Brain Project promises to offer a new model for neuroscience. This novel enterprise alone may suffice to justify the worthiness of the research on the stimulation of the human brain.
Lau Hieng-Hiong, Hsinchu, TAIWAN

Just some ideas:
- Officially Switzerland is not a EU country, however practically… it is in many ways connected, strangled with EU countries around it….borders could be seen as artificial created things by humans to get power upon others…. seldom created to organise countries better
- A good abondance society should focus on many aspects in parallel, guess it is big part of the media who always zoom in on the crisis, while in many countries of the EU biggest part of people still have normal decent quality jobs. Feel like better to let such projects grow to give more people work then only focusing on crisis…. in the long term it is just a fluctuation in the timeline. Hope EU, America, Asia, Africa… will fluctuate toegther for the better of human mankind

I wonder how much the Chinese are spending on building artificial brains? Professor de Garis drops by here from time to time, and IIRC, he used to head China’s biggest brain research project. Perhaps he can tell us.

All talk appears fixated on intelligence. Who is asking the important questions of what will motivate a vastly superior AI? There is no shortage of intelligence for the functioning of human society as it exists today, therefor I disagree with a statement attributed to Ray Kurzweil from Pete: “Intelligence is the most important phenomenon in the universe” Imagination coupled with wisdom are far more nuanced and complex in function as phenomenon than the raw engine of intelligence.

What will control greater intelligence? Will AI be given will or will AI set its own agenda as to what it may want to accomplish that will certainly be very different from most “organic” humans? In the case of Cyborg intelligence the will and use of that enhanced intelligence is to be that of the specific human foundation where it resides, which i submit is a weak foundation for what will be added on by science. We cannot only think of what an Einstein might accomplish given much vaster intelligence but what an Adam Lanza might achieve.

I think many of the readers on this forum would argue that it isn’t artificial intelligence that they want– it’s human intelligence greatly amplified. But I do tend to share your concerns about what is considered intelligent and will be done with “faster” minds. Many of the arguments I read are still espousing a U.S.-centric world view that just seems archaic to me. Being able to think more thoughts more quickly but keeping the same old biases is not something I’d care to witness, let alone be a part of. My hope would be that advanced intelligence would include– or at least make more likely– what I would like to call “wisdom.”

Dead right. We can neither predict not control what an AI’s motivations will be. MIRI (previously the Singularity Institute) reckons it can, if you send them enough money, but it seems an impossible task to me.

Even if the AI is benign towards us, would humans survive the ennui of being vastly less intelligent than our own creation?

It seems to me that our only chance of surviving the arrival of AI is to merge with it. Trouble is, uploading will require much more advanced tech than building the first AI.

1.3 billion and 3 billion might sound like huge sums of money, but the truth is they’re not compared to how much governments spend on other things. For example, the US added 2 trillion* to its debt due to the wars in the middle east. If that money had been put into a cause like this, imagine how much could’ve been achieved by now.

Too abstract. Perhaps I am not as smart/knowledgeable. Please explain.
“If I had 10 years until the volcano erupted I should spend the first 9 planning how to escape it”
What does this have to do with synapses?
You suggesting some kind of “spontaneously generated sentience” will appear and cause havoc? Or am I misunderstanding you?

I also think the insights gained from these should be applied on humans *immediately* (drugs and cyborgization), for the sake of the wellbeing of all humans.

“As the most important phenomenon in the universe, intelligence is capable of transcending natural limitations,” Kurzweil writes in “How to Create a Mind,” “….other intelligent species are likely not to exist…From this perspective, reverse-engineering the human may be regarded as the most important project in the universe.”

Whether it takes 10 years or 20, nothing could be more important to science or to our self-understanding. A few billion dollars is a pittance compared to the importance of this task.

RE “A few billion dollars is a pittance compared to the importance of this task.”
Totally agreed. The rich entrepreneurs who are members of the “Giving Pledge” should put their money in Whole Brain Emulation.

When mind-uploading is achieved, our minds will run at a speed millions of times faster than on our current, natural brains. Scientific, technological and cultural discovery and progress will speed up gigantically.
Let’s hope the Human Brain Project recieve gigantic funds and have all the world’s brightest scientists focusing on it.

JFK said it best in his Man on the moon speech to congress in 1961.
“…we have examined where we are strong and where we are not, where we may succeed and where we may not. Now is the time to take longer strides— time for great American Enterprise— time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth.
I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshalled the National resources required for such leadership- we have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment..
….i believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal…”

I don’t think it’s relevant who achieves this particular “goal.” Better understanding of the human brain is a boon to all humanity. And I have to believe that scientists from the European Union and the United States will see the benefits of collaboration rather than competition in the pursuit of this project.

Sompolinsky brings to mind Ray’s comment on how researcher’s eyes would glaze over when they were working on micron sized components and people would suggest that components would get orders of magnitude smaller.

If all we achieve in ten years is proving conclusively that faithfully replicating the mind (and consciousness) in a computer is possible we will have accomplished enough. The potential impact of that revelation could be enormous, and not a little disruptive.

Ray said that *intelligence is the most important phenomenon in the Universe*. We need to devote gigantic amount of money and talents into Whole Brain Emulation.
Whole Brain Emulation will lead to Mind-Uploading and Superintelligence.
The speed of scientific and technological discoveries will be millions of times faster than the speed of today.
Some scientists said that *the most fundamental sciences are mathematics*. Despite that notion, I believe we need to work primarily on WBE.
WBE leads to superintelligence. Superintelligence can make discoveries in *every field* at extremely great speed, including mathematics.

They started with a mouse brain, will move to cat or dog brain then continue with ape and human brain. I think the Human Brain Project has a timeline with milestones on their page (or i saw it somewhere else … google is your friend :)).

We need quantum computers to help us process the massive amount of data involved in neuroscience.
With quantum computers we will enter Singularity much faster.
Actually, I suspect the researchers at the world’s universities, the military, and D-Wave Systems *already* have QCs (and related knowledge) that are much better than what they publicize. I believe it’s time for ubiquitous, inexpensive, citizen quantum computing.

Re (Robert) “A decade is a fairly short time and the brain is very complex. I think he [Sompolinsky] is just skeptical.”

I am also skeptical of the possibility to “reverse-engineer the human brain in computers” in only a decade.

But this goal is achievable in principle (the brain/mind system is just another physical system like everything else) and has huge potential payoffs (from better AI to neural prostheses all the way to human immortality), so I am confident that it will be achieved, even though it may take longer than a decade.

If we Westerners don’t start soon, others will start, and leave us in the dust.

Giulo:
Markram had a video on this site that dealt with his presentation at a Sngularity Conference. I don’t remember whether it was the one from this last October or the year before, but he said that there were 357 identifiable brain diseases and that the point of his research was to create the format to cure them.
He asserted that by 2020. Alzheimer’s disease will cost mankind 2 trillion dollars annually. If he can cure only that disease, the effort and the money spent on it will be well worth it. Con Tanti Auguri Canepari Renzo

I think an important question to ask the critics is if they have read Ray’s books, and do they agree with his premises. I think Ray say’s it best when he refers to the genetic code. The code for the brain may be a large percentage of the genome but it really represents relatively simple structure repeated many times. It kind of like a forest. If you look at it from above it looks dauntingly complex. As you study it you find that there are a limited number of plants and animals repeated over and over. They may form complex local environments but the principal players keep repeating in predictable ways.

Every penny that we put toward this endeavor will pay off many times over. The more research project that we start up and incorporate into understanding how the brain works, the sooner we will get the job done. Coordinating all the diverse researchers is paramount. We understand a lot now. The goal is a lot closer now. There will always be detractors, we need to just keep pushing on forward.

Ray’s theory is the one of the most advanced we have about Whole Brain Emulation now.
Knowing theories is not enough, we must apply.
I believe quantum computers should be used on Whole Brain Emulation now, instead of being only used for military (as in Lockheed Martin) and civilian-controlling (as in CIA).
If we can apply QC in Whole Brain Emulation carefully and assertively, Singularity will arrive much earlier.

It is often said that knowledge is power, hence the political implications of such projects.

But actually now we are drowning in data. It is about time to transform that big data and the forthcoming avalanche of ever more huge data in chewable knowledge and for this we need a principled and methodical approach.

Negative critics like the Sompolinsky one remind us that Science is an all too human endeavor too. Most probably this man is sad or afraid to be left on the fringes, not a very noble attitude.

If this is a really hard problem, and it will take a long time to complete then we had best start working on it immediately. Some of the negative commenters state that we don’t know enough to be successful. That’s exactly why we need to try this – to explore possibilities and expand our knowledge. If there are other paths towards the same success then they should be worked in parallel and then all projects can leverage each others’ improved knowledge. Waiting for someone else to tell you the answers you seek is not a good plan.

I agree with you 100%. The world would still be flat if we follow the logic that something is too hard or we don’t understand enough. It’s my belief that there is a lot of jealousy in some of these research fields and individuals trying to ride the coat tails. What better way to get publicity than to say someone isn’t going to work. It requires no effort on your part but you get to be the guy that said they were wrong. The best way to learn is by doing. Infants know this instinctively. Why do we forget this as adults?

Soviet Russia (if I remember correctly) had a practice of forcing some young students to intensely study science and produce essays (and remove *humanities* courses from their education).
I believe similar processes (of eliminating humanities courses) will greatly speed up science-discovery rate.
Not everyone will accept that, so perhaps we can recruit only volunteers (who want to maximally devote their time on science).
Today, we have advanced computers, so we should also create “robotic-scientists” that can work 24-7 and much faster than humans.
We also need to apply our discoveries very quickly. Good discoveries without real-life application are greatly tragic wastes.

Brain-mapping can lead to mind-uploading and super-intelligence.
With mind-uploading (allowing scientists, if they are uploaded, to think and work 1000s of times faster) and super-intelligence, we can find cures to cancer and AIDS much easier.

a 100 billion cells and a 100 trillion connections does not a complex brain make. No more than a swallow makes spring. We really don’t know yet if the brain is very complex or just fairly complex or even fairly straight forward.

I also think that a virtual brain without the molecular level will be a slightly dysfunctional brain, especially for long-term memories and learning. But nonetheless, I also think that it could be pretty similar to a real human brain, and execute simple tasks (if taught, or uploaded from an analysed connectome). The best way to know is to do it and test it. The HBP is the right way leading to substrate independent mind and that is why they are getting funds. The death of death is within our reach.

Right now, there are quantum computers (extremely powerful computers). Lockheed Martin (the military company) is using a quantum computer.
I believe, if QC is applied in brain-mapping, the HBP can reach its goal in less than a decade.
First, we use QC to evolve robotic scientists (work 24/7, non-stop on this task).
Second, we feed the robotic scientists with all the available data, and ask them to generate science discoveries(that are very insightful and are breakthroughs).
Third, we ask the robotic scientists to invent nervous-system-cyborgizations for humans (so that the human researchers can betterly understand the data).
Four, we now combine the raw power of the QC-based robotic scientists and the human researchers’s brain power, brain mapping and WBE is achieved.
Five, upload any human beings who wish to be uploaded.
This involves in-body nano-robots. We will ask the robotic-scientists and the cyborgized human-scientists to invent nano-robots.

Without wasting money on Israel (and the Iraq War, the Gulf War and earlier wars), USA could have achieved a lot more.
It’s good that some researchers in USA are self-funding now.
Let’s hope EU, Japan, China, Russia and other countries can pay attention to brain-mapping and concentrate money and talents on this.